Monday, May 30, 2016

I realized it’s been way too long since I posted a step-by-step, so here are the progress photos:

I started with my pencil drawing on the Gessobord, then started adding my acrylic glazes (for this painting I used Liquitex acrylic glazing medium mixed with my paints for transparency). I started with cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue. The eyes are a glaze of cerulean with a very transparent yellow glaze over that.

Next, I added glazes of quinacridone fuchsia and pyrrole red. The transparent fuchsia over the ultramarine makes a beautiful purply blue, and the red over the yellow is a wonderful vivid orange. I added another layer of the red glaze over the grasses on the right, making them more red than orange.

More layers of fuchsia and ultramarine glazes, and a bit of yellow glaze with a very transparent cerulean, making a nice light green for the sunnier part of his chest. I also darkened his eyes a bit, and added the dark outline of his eyes with indigo.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Getting back to this one this afternoon, after taking yesterday to work on another large landscape, and here’s the current progress photo. This is the point in the painting when I’m stepping back often, taking stock of the color combinations, deciding what and how much of the vivid underpainting I want to leave showing. The composition of this one also has sort of a craftsman feel to me, with a kind of stylized design to it.

Those of you who guessed “PONTOUFLE!” were correct: here he is, lying in some tall grass near the front porch. I like to imagine that HE’S imagining himself one of the big cats, a lion or tiger, deep in the heart of the jungle somewhere.

Kind of like Bailey in This Side Up, imagining herself tearing through outer space at the speed of light, in her own private starship:

The week before Mother’s Day I drove the back roads to nearby Ruston to deliver a commissioned painting, and what should have been about an hour drive turned into two hours because I kept stopping to take photos. Such a pretty drive! This painting started off being inspired by one of my Savannah photos, and ended up being influenced so much by these Louisiana country roads. So much fun painting the shadows in this. And the trees. And the sun spots.

Last month I was in Savannah, Georgia, teaching a couple of workshops, and in between the two I had the weekend free. Sunday afternoon I was kicking back in the living room with a glass of iced tea and a book, when my hostess with the mostest (hey, Sue!) breezes through the room and says, “Come with me, there’s something you need to see. You can bring your tea. And grab your camera!”So I picked up my glass of tea and followed her out, swooping up my camera as we passed by the hall table. We piled into her SUV and she drove me to a nearby neighborhood where she parked in front of the biggest, most jaw-droppingly gorgeous oak tree I’ve ever seen.

That’s me there in front, so you can see how GIGANTIC this old tree is.

After I finished taking approximately one gazillion photos of the tree, Sue took me to nearby Wormsloe Plantation, where I took more photos, one of which was the inspiration for today’s painting.

The tours were closed for the day, so we couldn’t drive in, but just looking down the oak-lined drive was pretty spectacular.

After that, we did some more sightseeing until the sun started going down.

I enjoyed the afternoon immensely, and came back with lots and lots of reference photos.

All in all, a beautiful way to spend an April afternoon in Savannah. Thanks, Sue!

Here’s our big orange tabby, Pontoufle, engaging in one of his absolute favorite pastimes: napping in a sunny spot near a window in my studio.Okay. I ask you. How in the world could I continue working on my landscapes while this cutie patootie was stackin’ up Z’s just inches away from where I was seated at the easel?

This may seem like it came completely out of left field, and it did. While I was downloading Savannah photos from my camera, I came across some from our California trip last fall that were still on the flash card, and this painting was inspired by one of those. I really had fun playing with shapes and textures in this. Now I’m working on a large Louisiana woodland painting and a small Savannah landscape at the same time. Working with the different color schemes and textures is keeping me on my artistic toes, for sure!

Saturday, May 14, 2016

I’ve been painting and painting (and obviously not blogging at all), working on a few commissions for quite a while now, and I’m working on editing a couple of step-by-step posts to publish soon, so keep checking back!

I’ve also been busy downloading and editing the nearly 4,000 (not kidding) photos I took during my trip to Savannah in April. This big guy was just one of the dogs I met (along with their very friendly owners!) while out walking through the neighborhoods and in the parks, and his “Mom” graciously gave me permission to take some photos.

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ABOUT ME

I’m an artist living in the farm country of north Louisiana, along with my husband, our four cats and five dogs.
I love to paint everything (including the walls in our house) and find constant inspiration in my daily life: dogs, cats, cows, horses, trees, fields, ponds and bayous, morning light, afternoon light ... you get the idea.
My work is greatly inspired by the style of America’s Golden Age of Illustration, particularly the work of Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and others.
I’ve been painting my whole life, and I have sold my work to patrons all over the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe. As a follower of Christ, and with God’s help, my daily goal is to live every aspect of my life to the glory of God, from the most mundane and necessary of chores to the work I enjoy the best, ever grateful to be able to share whatever gifts I most graciously have been given.

Find my art here, too

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Published!

AN ARTIST’S JOURNAL where family, friends and mysterious strangers can see my paintings as they’re created, and where I’m liable to write on just about anything – the joy of creating art; life in the country; and, as a follower of Christ, aspiring to glorify God in all I do.

I’m happy to say that my art and technique has been included in this book by UK author/artist Gill Barron, the fairly famous Painter of Everything (she’s well on her way to painting everything in the entire world, and doing a beautiful job of it, too).

I have two step-by-step projects in the book, as well as several other finished paintings used as illustrations.